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BANGKOK - Thousands of Thai protesters besieged the prime minister's temporary offices at an abandoned Bangkok airport Tuesday on the second day of marches aimed at toppling the elected government.
Yellow-clad activists took trucks, buses and cars to the old Don Mueang international airport - where premier Somchai Wongsawat set up shop after activists captured the capital's main government offices in August.
The show of force came a day after thousands of demonstrators descended on parliament in what they have called the "final battle" against the administration, forcing lawmakers to postpone a joint session.
"There are more than 10,000 of us here and we are prepared for a long siege like at Government House (in central Bangkok)," said Sawit Kaoewan, a leader of the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Police confirmed the figure.
Despite the mounting disruption to his administration, Somchai vowed not to cave in to the protesters' demands, and branded their movement "a rebellion".
"The people are the ones who make decisions because my government came from an election under the Constitution... Anyone who wants to overthrow or resist the government is attempting a rebellion," Somchai told the Thai National News Agency.
The PAD, which is backed by the old power elite in the military, palace and bureaucracy, accuses the government of being a corrupt puppet of exiled former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup.
The alliance has called on the army to intervene and says it wants to change the one-man one-vote electoral system that has delivered victories for Thaksin - Somchai's brother-in-law -- and his allies since 2001.
Police largely withdrew from the airport site overnight and were hardly visible on Tuesday morning, amid fears of a repeat of violent clashes during rallies on October 7 that left two dead and 500 injured.
Protesters waved Thai flags and rattled the anti-government movement's signature plastic hand clappers, while most wore yellow clothes that symbolise loyalty to the country's deeply revered king, AFP correspondents said.
Protest leaders asked supporters not to occupy Somchai's office itself - but some went in and out of the building to use the toilets.
Thousands of PAD supporters left the old airport and moved to the nearby military headquarters after speculation that the Cabinet would meet there, but returned to Don Mueang when they were prevented entry.
The government said the regular Tuesday Cabinet meeting had been put back to Wednesday, when the prime minister returns from an APEC summit in Peru.
"There is no conclusion on the venue of the meeting but there are plenty of places ready to convene the Cabinet meeting," spokesman Nattawut Saikaur said.
Meanwhile, government-run corporations said there was no response to a strike call by Thailand's main public sector union, the State Enterprise Workers Relations Confederation, which has 190,000 members.
Authorities said there was also no effect on the handful of domestic flights that operate from another part of Don Mueang.
The PAD called this week's rallies in response to a grenade attack on Thursday that killed one protester and wounded another 29. Another man died in a second attack on Saturday.
The movement launched huge street protests in 2006 that led to the Thaksin coup and it is trying the same tactic with the current administration.
Multi-millionaire Thaksin fled Thailand in August this year to avoid corruption charges, but has said in an interview that he wants to return.
"With me at the helm I can bring confidence quickly back to Thailand," he told Arabian Business magazine in an interview published Sunday on its website.
"We have to find a mechanism under which I can go back, that is why I must tell you that I will go back into politics."
The protests have partly paralysed policymaking and affected the economy in Thailand -- the country at the centre of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
- AFP/ir
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